Recycling firm guilty of dumping

A RECYCLING company and its boss have been found guilty of dumping waste on the site of a former West Lothian coal mine.

Lanarkshire-based Doonin Plant Ltd and company secretary Gary Doonin kept controlled waste in a manner likely to cause pollution.

A jury at Livingston Sheriff Court yesterday found the firm and its 46-year-old director guilty of four charges brought under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Sentence was deferred for six weeks for the firm to produce accounts and for social workers to prepare a background report on Doonin, of Blantyre, Lanarkshire. The jury heard evidence that hundreds of tonnes of controlled waste was stored on the site of the former Woodend Colliery, near Armadale.

Scientists from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency claimed the rubbish produced noxious gas affecting local and global air quality and poisonous fluids capable of killing fish and plants in local rivers.

Doonin Plant is the largest recycler of construction waste in Central Scotland.

Sheriff Douglas Kinloch told Doonin: “On the evidence I heard this was on a large scale and, although you have no previous convictions, I consider it appropriate to obtain a background report before sentence is passed.”